Slaps and Bennies (episode 27)

Slaps and bennies are a type of external motivation. In that, they're less effective than playing on intrinsic motivation, but we’ll keep that one for the big motivation episode in the future. As the GM, they are tools that can help you encourage the players toward certain experiences, and away from certain other experiences. If we’re playing fast-paced action with “movie-rules”, award the player who jumps on the chandelier. If we’re in the middle of a horror scene and someone makes an inappropriate humorous action that threatens to ruin the mood, a slap can encourage them to stop that. Wisdom from Paranoia XP (2:15) Trust the Computer. Paranoia XP. Attend, Gamemaster, to this wisdom. If you reward players for doing something you like, they will do more of that. If you punish players for doing something you don’t like, they will do less of that. Truly, within these simple words lies Gamemaster enlightenment. Encourage, impartially, creative play, humor and stylish backstabbing. Punish, remorselessly, slow play and rules arguments. In PARANOIA GM talk, rewards are called benefits or, colloquially, bennies. Punishments are slaps. Bennies and slaps can be in-game (The Computer or other authorities administer them to Alpha Complex characters) or in-your-face (you, the GM, administer them to your players). Principles of conditioning: Timing: Reward your players frequently and quickly, especially early in a mission. Punish them immediately as required. Consistency: Always describe your bennies as an explicit reward for creative play: ‘I like that, it’s funny. You get 1 Perversity point.’ Likewise, make it clear why you punish a player. Generally, match the generosity of the award or severity of punishment to the player’s degree of entertainment or offense. Motivation: Early in a play session, motivate proper play through frequent Perversity awards and other bennies. Later, when you feel you’ve earned their respect, you can administer stern corrections. The GM is responsible for keeping us all playing the thing we wanted to play. For more on that, check out our GM Responsibilities episode. S&B as an integral part of the game mechanics (7:22) Savage Worlds has Bennies, which we explain here. Fate has Fate Points, which we explain here. In D&D you have Inspiration, which is a good idea, but with a problematic execution. Are there task-specific bennies? Maybe can be inserted into Torchbearer or Mouse Guard. Don’t punish the player in some way that takes him out of play or prevents doing fun things. That just weakens the game for everyone. In systems that have dice-generated resources, like Mistborn’s Nudges or Genesys’ Advantages, you can award some. S&B as an external part of the game (16:45) Giving narrative power, “Describe this” Pointing the spotlight. Giving your attention, at all. Laughing, enjoying, encouraging, flowing forward. How to add a S&B mechanics to your game? (26:00) Do I understand the game system enough as to not ruin the game balance? Should I add this mechanic? A bennys/slaps mechanic is used to encourage a specific behaviours and you should ask yourself, is there a better way to encourage this? Should I encourage this? If you do add mechanics, remember to have them all for timing and consistency of delivery. Also check out our episdoe We Need a New Mechanic for This. Taking the load off (28:45) Uri: Signs that you shouldn’t attack - Uri the player is less smart than Uri the podcaster. Eran: I will be at UK Games Expo, actually already was (and it was great). Time Travel Tense Troubles! The Ennie Awards We now have a Patreon page, in case you'd like to support us in a monetary fashion. Our Facebook group (Most links to DriveThruRPG are affiliate, which means we get a bit of money if you buy through them, with no added cost to you)